Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

Obama began using his 068 number in 1986, the year after he moved to Chicago. Did good neighbor Ayers lend him a Connecticut social security number? To me, this seems a more likely explanation than a typographical error. Lacking the resources to probe further, however, I can only speculate.

The Times has no such excuse. Its editors have the resources. They simply choose not to employ them. From Obama’s first days on the national scene, in fact, the Times has shown itself oddly incurious about his past, his very identity for that matter.

In late October 2007, for instance, the Times ran a telling article headlined, “Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say.” Given that he was a candidate for president, the Times expected Obama to welcome the chance to reconcile his account in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, with the accounts of those who knew him.

“Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years,” reported the Times’ Janny Scott. For reasons unexplained, she and her editors chose to leave this particular hole in Obama’s life unfilled.

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Maybe now we can get someone OTHER than Cahill to run down some of these “oddities”?

General Patton was outspoken. He was no diplomat. He saw no romance in war as military recruiters often sell to young men. He had the unflinching nerve. He didn’t mince his words. He spoke with bluntness. He was not politically correct.

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World War II on the Eastern Front was wrapping up. German generals signed an unconditional surrender agreement on May 7, 1945. US generals would return home to face hearings and inquiries about the war. As the film indicates, General Patton was going to disclose all the screw-ups and mistakes on the war front. Somebody didn’t want Patton’s bluntness to reach Congress and the American people.

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With very sketchy information at the time, my late uncles — who always suspected FDR caused Pearl Harbor — always believed that he was assassinated to shut him up. They felt it was to protect “the establishment”.

DeSantis finds it staggering that Saudi Arabia was “granted sovereign immunity” despite so much evidence pointing in its direction.

“Since when do you afford sovereign immunity to a foreign country involved in terrorist attacks upon your country that kills tens of thousands, not just the 3,000 that they claimed that day, which I don’t believe as I think it was higher, but those who have died later from their injuries and their illnesses,” he said.

• In the days before 9/11, highly abnormal levels of put options — bets that a stock price will fall — were in place on major US stock markets for not only the airlines involved, but also for multiple financial giants that suffered significant losses in the attacks.

Look here, Mary Surratt was sentenced to death with no appeal possible. Her lawyer managed to obtain a writ to stay her execution and give her a retrial in a civilian court. But—get this—the President of the United States overruled the writ and sent Mary to the gallows. Seems they were in rather a hurry to murder the woman so they wouldn’t appear to have made a mistake. Or, perhaps, to justify themselves as absolute authority. Mary was executed to make sure the government was not embarrassed. People say, “Hey, we were at war! The president had been assassinated! People were scared!” And so that is an acceptable reason to murder an innocent woman? That’s a good reason to refuse the honor the Constitution that supposedly was the highest law of the land? People will say, “Well, that was the past! We’ve learned from that mistake!” Have we?

US healthcare OpinionFor my daughter, the EpiPen is a lifeline, not a luxuryLiz Richardson VoylesThursday 25 August 2016 12.22 EDT Last modified on Thursday 25 August 2016 12.36 EDT

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The disgraceful 461% increase in the price of this vital medication is a symptom of a system where corporate greed takes precedence over public health

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This month, pharmaceutical company, Mylan, crowed that they smashed second-quarter expectations; with earnings of $2.56bn, up 8% from the year before. Their CEO’s salary has ballooned 671% over the past eight years. The corporation was able to accomplish this in part, because they are the maker of a medical device called the EpiPen, which delivers a life-saving drug to stop an anaphylactic allergy attack. The company has raised the price of this medication 461% since 2007. Mylan’s latest announcement – that it would offer various new pricing concessions to families on lower incomes and those who have to pay out of pocket, cannot alter this stark fact.

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Now before we take the “capitalist pigs” out and lynch them, can we make some inquiries?

1. Is this the only epi pen on the market?

2. Is it patented? If so, how many years left?

3. How is the FDA involved in this process? How much did / does Mylan spend on regulatory compliance?

4. Has there been any “political” involvement?

5. Does a corporation have to “justify” it’s prices? (In a truly free market, the “invisible hand” would prompt supply from competitors very quickly!)

Donald Trump is a false-flag candidate. It’s all an act, one that benefits his good friend Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party that, until recently, counted the reality show star among its adherents. Indeed, Trump’s pronouncements – the open racism, the demagogic appeals, the faux-populist rhetoric – sound like something out of a Democratic political consultant’s imagination, a caricature of conservatism as performed by a master actor.

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This is certainly not beyond the realm of plausibility.

Given his flip flop on NATO.

And, his avoidance of hitting HRC on the issues that resonate with Joesixpack — it’s the economy stupid.